Page 129 - Effective Communication Soft Skills Strategies For Success by Nitin Bhatnagar, Mamta Bhatnagar

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Psychology and Communication | 117

your objectives. You will evaluate your co-workers in terms of how
efficiently and co-operatively they can work with you in the project.
Principle 4: Your self-perception also influences how you perceive
others and how you act on your own perceptions. Your decision
about whom to choose to work with you in the project is also influ-
enced by how you perceive yourself. If you think you are a slightly
difficult person to work with, you may look for people who are more
adjustable and obedient, rather then people who are assertive and
non-compromising.

In combination, these four basic principles underscore that person-perception
is not a one-way process in which we objectively survey other people and
then logically evaluate their characteristics. Instead, our self-perception,
or the perception we have of others interact collectively and influence our
understanding of the other person. Each component plays a role in the
judgments we form of others.
Consider the following events:

• You receive a lower grade in a term paper than you expected.
• You leave several messages for a friend on her answering machine,
but she never returns your calls.

• You have applied for a job and feel that you are highly qualified for it,
but you do not get it.

What questions would arise in your mind in each of these situations?
Certainly, you would want to know why? This is the acid test we face in most
situations. We want to know why other people have acted the way they do,
or why events have turned out in the way they do. Such knowledge is crucial
for us to understand the causes behind others’ action or behind events that
occur; only then can we hope to make sense of the social world and perhaps
do better socially in the future.

Attribution

The knowledge of others, current moods, or feelings can be useful in social
perception in many ways but in actuality, this is only the first step. In our
quest to know the ‘other’ we also want to know the causes behind their
behaviour. We do not simply want to know how others have acted; we would
also want to know why they have done so. The process through which we
seek such information is known as attribution. Thus, we can say that, attribu-
tion refers to our efforts to understand the cause behind others’ behaviour as
well as the cause behind our own behaviour.

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